jiro kuwata

One of the most fun things about reading Jiro Kuwata's Bat-Manga is seeing all the changes that Kuwata made when he adapted stories that were originally published in the American Batman comics. Sometimes, they're taken to a more elaborate extreme, like the now-legendary Lord Death Man story, and sometimes they're almost completely rewritten, like Kuwata's take on Batman's battle with the pro-wrestling Hooded Hangman, but if you're a die-hard fan of the Caped Crusader, there's always enough in there to be amazing.

That's why I'm so stoked about the next story, in which Batman faces the hulking, disfigured form of The Outsider -- better known as his once-faithful butler, Alfred Pennyworth! Check out preview pages below, and get excited, it's gonna be a good one.

A: At first glance, this seems like one of the easiest questions I've ever tackled in this column. I mean, of course he could, right? He's Batman. While the rest of us were learning algebra in 8th grade, this dude was traveling across the world learning how to be the best possible expert at everything, just in case he needed it for his never-ending war on crime. Surely that would have to include professional wrestling, the King of Sports, if only because there's no other discipline that combines theatricality and combat in the way that would serve him so well back in Gotham City.

And yet, the more I think about it, the more I realize that, as shocking as it might be for me to say this as the World's Foremost Batmanologist... I doubt even Batman could beat a pro wrestler in his natural element.

But those of us who have been reading for years (if not decades) are chiefly looking for one big thing above all else: novelty. We want to see something we’ve never seen before; characters we recognize as the heroes and villains we love being put into scenarios and settings wholly unlike what’s come in nearly 80 years of superhero comics.

That’s notoriously hard to do. Many times, stories end up being very similar to what’s come before, and when creators do try something new, they elicit complaints from readers who don’t like particular changes or decisions. But what if you could strip away those pressures and build a superhero comic that’s so strange and unique that it’s a must-read?

That’s what Jiro Kuwata’s 1960s Batman comics, currently being republished as the DC Digital Series Batman: The Jiro Kuwata Batmanga, are. A strange combination of classic Batman comics, the 1960s Batman TV-show, Marvel-Age science-based storytelling, mysticism, cartoon physics, Tokusatsu, and of all things, Scooby-Doo, it isn’t like any comic I’ve ever read. It’s endlessly surprising, and I love it.

As much as I love the stories of Lord Death Man and Professor Gorilla, the one thing I was really excited about when DC announced that they'd be bringing Jiro Kuwata's Batmanga back into print after over 40 years was that they'd be getting to stories that I hadn't read. The collection that Chip Kidd put together a few years ago was, after all, just the tip of the iceberg, and it was the stuff that hadn't been reprinted that was going to get really weird -- and if you've been keeping up, you've seen just how strange things can be.

In next week's episode, the current story comes to its climax with "The Man Who Quit Being Human," which, given that the previous story has featured the aforementioned Professor Gorilla, has been pretty surprisingly dark. Batman and Robin are facing down against a terrifying foe who wants to eliminate his mutated genes from his daughter, and it's pretty incredible. Check out a preview below!

This week, Chris and Matt are oddly surprised by the (possible?) commentary found in New Suicide Squad #1 by Sean Ryan and Jeremy Roberts. Then they like how Armor Hunters #1 by Robert Venditti and Doug Braithwaite hits the big event-comic notes without being contrived. And finally, they discuss a couple of DC's digital-comic offerings: Scooby Doo Team-Up #5 by Sholly Fisch and Dario Brizuela, and Bat-Manga #1 by Jiro Kuwata.

Between three monthly titles, a spot in the Justice League, an ongoing weekly series in print and an ongoing weekly digital-first series, you might be under the woefully mistaken impression that there were enough comics about Batman going around to satisfy everyone's needs. If you are, then you, my friend, are wrong. We always need more Batman. And apparently I'm not the only one who thinks so.

Today, DC Comics announced not one, but three new Batman comics, set to be released soon: Arkham Manor by Gerry Duggan and Shawn Crystal, Gotham Academy by Becky Cloonan, Brendan Fletcher and Karl Kerschl, and a digital-first collection of Jiro Kuwata's Bat-Manga, translated and reprinted in its entirety for the first time since it was originally published in Japan in 1966.

We make a regular practice at ComicsAlliance of spotlighting particular artists or specific bodies of work, but because cartoonists, illustrators and their fans share countless numbers of great images on sites like Flickr, Tumblr, DeviantArt and seemingly infinite art blogs that we’ve created Best Art Ever (This Week), a weekly depository for just some of the pieces of especially compelling artwork that we come across in our regular travels across the Web. Some of it’s new, some of it’s old, some of it’s created by working professionals, some of it’s created by future stars, some of it’s created by talented fans, and some of it’s endearingly silly. All of it’s awesome.

A lot of people hadn't heard about artist Jiro Kuwata's mid-1960s manga adaptation of Batman until the 2008 release of Chip Kidd's book Bat-Manga!, which included translated excerpts of the work, but didn't collect the full story (or include Kuwata's name on the cover).

Now, Kuwata's Batman stories, which originally ran in the magazines Weekly Shōnen King and Shōnen Gahō, has finally been collected, in full, in a three volume box set from Japanese publisher Shogakukan Creative.

Last week, DC revealed the solicitation text for Grant Morrison and Yanick Paquettle's "Batman, Inc." #2, and like a lot of what Morrison's done during his run on Batman, this one's bringing back something from an obscure story from the '60s:

The dynamic new era of Batman continues! The Dark Knight and Mr. Unknown – the

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